Importing and Reusing Course Content

You can import content from a previous course in Canvas or from another Learning Management System by following these steps.

  1. Browse to your course in Canvas and select the “Settings” button at the bottom of your course menu
  2. On the right side of the settings page you will see several buttons, click the one that says “Import Content Into This Course”
  3. On the Import Content page click the dropdown menu labeled “Content Type” at the top of the page and select the appropriate file type
  4. A “Browse to” button will appear, browse to prior course material
  5. Choose to add test questions (if any are included in your file) to an existing question bank in Canvas or create a new question bank
  6. Select “All Content” or “Select Specific Content.” The selection of specific content is accomplished in a subsequent step of the process
  7. In most cases you should leave the setting for “Overwrite assessment content with matching IDs” unchecked
  8. The “Adjust events and due dates” gives you the option of shifting all dates, substituting a day with a different day (for example move all Tuesday events to Wednesdays), and lastly you have the option of entirely removing all dates and then manually adjusting the dates on individual items after import
  9. Click the “Import” button. You will see a progress bar
  10. If you checked the option to “Select Specific Content,” after the import is complete you will see a button labeled “Select Content.” Click this button and you will see a list of course content arranged by item type. You can check a box to select all of the items of a particular type (question banks for example) or you can expand the list and choose only specific items from a list.